Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger 2)

"It's something I have to do myself," I said, holding to both his hands now. "Understand, please understand I still love you and always will."

"I understand," he said simply. "I wish you luck, my Catherine. I wish you happiness. I wish all your days are bright and sunny and you get what you want-- whether or not I am included in your plans. When you need me, if you ever need me, I'll be here, waiting to do what I can. Every minute I'll be loving you and missing you. . . . Just remember, when you want me I'll be there."

I didn't deserve him He was much too fine for the likes of me.

I didn't want Chris or Carrie to know what part of Virginia I was headed for. Chris wrote to me once or twice a week and I responded letter for letter--but not one word did I tell him he'd find out when he saw the change of address.

The month was May, and the day after Carrie's twentieth birthday party, celebrated without Chris there, Carrie, Jory and I set off in my car, backing out of Paul's driveway where we had come to say goodbye. Paul waved and when I looked in the rear-view mirror I saw him reach in his breast pocket for his handkerchief. He touched the tears in the corners of his eyes even as he kept on waving.

Henny stared after us. I thought I saw written in her expressive brown eyes. Fool, fool, fool to go away and leave good man!

Nothing proved more what a fool I was than the sunny day I set out for the mountains of Virginia with my small sister and son in the front seat next to me. But I had to do it--compelled by my own nature to seek the revenge in the place of our incarceration.

The Siren Call of the Mountains

. At the last moment I decided I couldn't risk seeing Bart Winslow even long enough to pay his fee, so I dropped a check for two hundred dollars in a mailbox and considered that enough--whether or not it was.

With Carrie beside me and Jory on her lap I headed straight for the Blue Ridge Mountains. Carrie was very excited now that we were on our way, her big blue eyes wide as she commented on everything we passed. "Oh, I love to travel!" she said happily. When Jory grew sleepy, she carefully made a bed for him on the back seat and sat with him to be sure he didn't roll off and fall to the floor. "He's so beautiful, Cathy. I am going to have at least six children, or maybe even more. I want half to look just like Jory, and half like you and Chris, and two or three like Paul."

"I love you, Carrie, and I pity you too. You're planning on a dozen children, not just six."

"Don't worry," she said, settling back to take a nap herself. "Nobody is gonna want me, so I won't ever have any children but yours to love."

"That's not true. I've got the feeling, once we are in our new home, Miss Carrie Dollanganger Sheffield is going to have a love of her own. I'll even bet you five dollars--is it a bet?" She smiled, but she refused to take on the bet.

As I drove on northwest and the night began tovbdescend Carrie grew very quiet. She stared out the windows and then back at me, and her large blue eyes held a look of fear. "Cathy, are we going back there?"

"No, not exactly." That's all I'd say until we'd found a hotel and settled in for the night.

The first thing in the morning a real estate woman I'd contacted in advance came to drive us in her car to look over the "properties for sale." She was a large, mannish woman and all business. "What you need is something compact, utilitarian and not too expensive. In this neighborhood all the houses run into big money. But there are a few small houses that the rich people used to use for guest homes, or they housed their servants in some. There's one that's very pretty with a nice flower garden."

She showed us that five-room cottage first and immediately I was won over I think Carrie was too, but I'd warned her to show no signs of approval. I picked at small details to lead the agent astray. "The chimney looks like it won't work."

"It's a fine chimney, a good draft."

"The furnace--does it use oil or gas?"

"Natural gas was installed five years ago and the bath has been remodeled, the kitchen too. A couple used to live here who worked for the Foxworths on the hill, but they sold out and went down to Florida. But you can tell they loved this house."

Of course they had. Only a house that had been very beloved would have all the nice little details that made it exceptional. I bought it and signed all the papers without a lawyer, though I'd read up on the subject and insisted on having the deed checked.

"We'll have a wall oven put in with a glass door," I said to Carrie who loved to cook--thank God, for I'd hardly have the time. "And we'll repaint the whole interior of the house ourselves and save the money."

Already I was finding out that one hundred thousand, after paying all the accounts I had to settle and putting the down payment on the cottage, was not going to last long. But I hadn't gone into this venture blindfolded. While Carrie stayed with Jory in a motel, I visited the ballet instructor who was selling her school and retiring. She was blond and very small, and nearing seventy. She seemed pleased to see me as we shook hands and settled on the amount she wanted. "I've seen you and your husband dance and really, Miss Dahl, though I'm delighted you want my school, it's a shame you are retiring at such an early age. I couldn't have given up performing at twenty-seven, never!"

She wasn't me. She didn't have my past or my kind of childhood. When she saw my determination to go through with the deal, she gave me the list of her students. "Most of these children belong to the wealthy people who live around here, and I don't think any of them seriously intend to become professional dancers. They come to please their parents who like to see them looking pretty in little tutus during the recitals. I have failed to turn out one gifted performer."

All three bedrooms in our cottage were very small, but the living room was L-shaped and of reasonable proportions, with a fireplace sided by bookcases. The short part of the L could be used as a dining room. Carrie and I set to with paint brushes and in one week we had painted every room a soft green. With the white woodwork it looked delicious. The space opened up and everything seemed larger. Carrie, of course, would have to have red and purple accessories for "her" room.

In three weeks we had both settled into a new routine, with me teaching the ballet school located over the local pharmacy and Carrie doing the housework and most of the cooking while she looked out for Jory. As often as possible I took Jory with me to class, not only to relieve Carrie of the

responsibility, but also to have him near me. I was remembering Madame Marisha's talk of letting him look and listen and get the feel of the dance.

I sat one Saturday morning in early June staring out the windows at the blue-misted mountains that never changed. The Foxworth mansion was still the same. I could have turned back the clock to 1957 and on this night taken Jory and Carrie by the hand and followed those meandering trails from the train depot. It would have been the same as when Momma led her four children up to their prison of hope and despair, then left them to be tortured, whipped and starved. I went over and over everything that had happened: the wooden key we'd made to escape our prison room, the money we'd stolen from our mother's grand bedroom, that night when we found a large book of sexual pleasures in the nightstand drawer. Maybe if we'd never seen that book . . . maybe then things would have turned out differently.

/> "What are you thinking of?" asked Carrie. "Are you thinking we should go back to visit Dr. Paul and Henny--I hope that's what you're thinking "

"Really, Carrie, you know I can't do that. It's recital time and the little girls and boys in my class will be rehearsing every day. It's the recitals the parents pay to see. Without them they have nothing to boast of to their friends. But maybe we could ask Paul and Henny to visit us."